Dubai: Three men are being held in police custody and two are on the run in conjunction with a Dh5 million robbery that occurred earlier this month.
Dubai Police’s Criminal Investigation Department revealed the details behind the robbery on Thursday.
Dr Colonel Mohammad Nasser Abdul Razak, Deputy Director of the Criminal Investigation Department of Police Affairs, said that two Asian nationals had reported that they were stopped by two cars in a parking lot and had around Dh5 million stolen from them on August 22.
The two men — a driver and an employee at a general trading company — said they had put the money in the car’s trunk and as they were going back to their company from the bank with the cash, they were intercepted by two cars in a parking lot.
The four men driving the cars threatened the pair at knifepoint, tied them up and drugged them, Abdul Razak said.
Colonel Salem Khalifa Al Rumaithi, Deputy CID Director for Investigation and Search, said that six teams, consisting of 60 policemen in total, were dispatched to investigate various aspects of the crime.
Some of the teams, Al Rumaithi said, handled the questioning of the two men, some were on field inspection, some gathered information from traffic cameras among other things.
Brains behind robbery
Lieutenant Colonel Saeed Al Ayali, Deputy Director of Dubai Police Criminal Investigation Department, said that after reading into the two men’s reports, the driver — one of the men held up by the gang — was suspected of being part of the robbery crew.
After further questioning of the driver, he confessed to being the brains behind the robbery.
Al Rumaithi said that they were able to get the majority of the stolen sum back, and have frozen multiple smaller sums of the money that the gang wired through various money transfer companies.
“They wired small amounts as to not raise any red flags. They have used seven different money transfer companies to do so.”
The police learned from the driver — who had worked at the company for three years — that the other four gang members were visitors and that two of them had already left the country 45 minutes before the robbery was reported, Al Rumaithi said.
He added that the robbery was planned a month in advance.
Al Rumaithi noted that on questioning the company’s director, he told them the driver had previously stolen a small amount of money in the past, but the director chose to let it go and did not report him.
Abdul Razak urged people to use money transportation companies for transporting large sums of money, to avoid robberies.
The driver, who was in on the plan, was beaten and sustained some injuries during the robbery’s execution in order to make him look like a victim, Al Ayali said.
The gang members are all Asian.
